Let’s Run a Rich White Guy

Saturday, February 28th, 2009

“Republican Party Activists” choose Mitt Romney as #1 contender for 2012. Did I mention this is stupid? Stupid as in — why even bother to have an election at all?

Conservative activists on Saturday named former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney the winner of a poll for best 2012 GOP presidential candidate.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney won 20 percent of the vote in straw poll for presidential favorites.

The poll marked the third consecutive year Romney came out on top.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal placed second in the annual poll, conducted at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

Romney received 20 percent of the vote and Jindal got 14 percent.

Close behind were Texas Rep. Ron Paul and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who each received 13 percent of the vote.

Okay, you know I want Palin. And I know “most” of you “party activists,” thinking “independently,” are going to march in lockstep and tell me she doesn’t come off well when she’s interviewed by perky Katie. And of course that means everything.

Here, let’s not have this argument. Neither mind is going to be changed. Instead, just ponder my litmus test…

Interview asks Candidate X the following: “What is your position on torturing detainees by means of waterboarding?” Candidate X can reply…

1. I think it’s wrong, wrong, wrong, although we’ve never done it.
2. It’s just terrible, and on my watch it will never happen again.
3. I don’t have a personal opinion about it but the experts tell me that’s torture, and I believe them.
4. Mister Interviewer, what the f— is your idea for getting information out of these guys?
5. When you think about it, a “civilized” society will do whatever it takes to fight these a**holes, and a “savage” society will sit around doing nothing so it can fool itself into thinking it’s “civilized.”
6. I would like you to define “torture”; we can agree, can we not, that it’s a useless word if it applies to anything you personally wouldn’t want to have done to you…right?
7. Peace is possible if we can get other nations to like us, or at least stop hating us.
8. It’s unconstitutional!
9. That question is above my pay grade.
10. I’ll have to get back to you on that, I don’t have an opinion yet.

My litmus test: Huge plus points for the candidate that answers with 4, 5 or 6 (in fact, MEGA points for the candidate that answers with 5). Enormous minus points for a candidate who answers with any of the others.

And I don’t think Romney would pick 4, 5 or 6.

As God is my witness, if there is one single thing about 21st-century American politics I simply don’t understand and simply can’t figure out, it is: Why is this such a tall fucking order? Seriously. Pardon my french, but this has long ago gotten just a little bit on the aggravating side. I want a candidate that will — for the benefit of all Americans, conservative and liberal — keep the conversation fixated on whether conservative ideas are better than liberal ideas, or vice-versa. Isn’t that what we want our elections to be about? Isn’t that what they’re supposed to be about?

McCain did quite a few things right. But he did a lot of things wrong…and my confidence is sky-high that Mitt would repeat each mistake, faithfully, like he was painting-by-numbers. And those mistakes have to do with reassuring people, people who figure out what offends them before they’ve really noodled out what’s a good idea and what isn’t a good idea, that he won’t be responsible for such offense…even if, in pursuing such an implied pact, he’d be implementing a lot of bad ideas and forsaking a lot of good ones.

Granted, I don’t think Palin is going to pursue the intricacies of cause-and-effect in foreign policy, money supply, unemployment, interrogation techniques, et al, any better than Romney or McCain. But if there’s one thing the conservative movement needs right now, it is representation by someone who will not apologize for believing in it.

Example:

Tax cuts work. You can cut the tax rate and in so doing, raise more revenue. It can be done — logic says so, history says so, and when logic and history agree we need to be paying attention. And the reason logic agrees with history, is that when it’s cheaper for people to do things, they’re more likely to do ‘em.

You people who want to argue that point, no matter how many letters you have after your name, can piss off. And you people who want me to apologize for believing in it, you can piss off too.

There. Like that. Clean up the language for television and so forth…but there it is. See how easy it is?

I swear to God, it’s like ordering a chocolate milkshake in a burger joint, waiting twenty minutes for it, and then finding out they forgot the order.

What in the hell is so hard about this??

This male chauvinist pig says — let’s recognize strength, and likelihood of success, in a woman when it’s really there. And this time, it’s really there. We need fidelity to principles, and unwillingness to apologize for having them, before we need ability to ingratiate with the Manhattan blue-blood crowd. We already tried the ability to ingratiate. It doesn’t fly. So stop it already. Just. Knock. It. Off. Now.

Update 3/1/09: Okay once again we’re reminded, it all depends on whom you ask. I’m all calmed down now. Cheesy YouTube clip is linked behind the screen cap below…

I took in Romney’s speech. It was a polished, well-delivered piece of rhetoric, and climaxed with an obvious riff on Holder’s “racial cowards” remark.
In the gallery, someone remarked that Romney is “a Bill Clinton who can keep his pants on”.
What matters about any candidate is their adherence to conservative, i.e. common-sense principles. Actually, there were half a dozen CPAC speakers for whom I could cheerfully vote.